- Hosting a blog yourself is not for everyone, but if you already have your own website or some of the drawbacks of wordpress.com bother you, or if you're feeling adventurous, then this is how to go about it.
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If you don't already have one you will need to choose an service provider. I use Streamline.net
www.streamline.net, but there are many many different providers. You will need a provider that allows scripting with
PHP version 4.3 or greater and allows you to have at least one MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater database.
If you do use Streamline.net this means signing up for the Power Hosting or higher option (Home doesn't include a MySQL database). The annual cost of this is currently £46.99 a year. That seems like a lot compared to "free", but remember that this includes 1.5GB of webspace a free.co.uk
domain name, email adresses and loads of other goodies including the ability to create your own sub-domains (for example if your domain isnotzooanimals.co.uk
you could createpigs.notzooanimals.co.uk
,sheep.notzooanimals.co.uk
,navi.notzooanimals.co.uk
or whatever).
The service provider will give you details of how to connect to set up and connect to your MySQL database, which you will need during the WordPress setup. They will also give you details of how to upload content to your site
- Go to www.wordpress.org and click on the blue Download WordPress button. This will take you to a new page where you have a choice of two downloads: a .zip file and a .tar.gz file. Unless your a techie chose the first of these (another blue button). When the download has finished edit the file wp-config-sample.php with the details of your MySQL database and save it as wp-config.php. Upload all the files to your website. It's best to put them in their own directory. Choose the name of this directory carefully as it will form part of the URL that your blog's visitors (what do you mean you don't expect visitors?) will use and it can't easily be changed later (it isn't simply a matter of renaming the directory).
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The final stage of installing your WordPress blog is run from your web site. If at Step 1 you set up a web site at
http://www.notzooanimals.co.uk
and at Step 2 you put the WordPress files into a directory calledblog
then you run the install by going tohttp://www.notzooanimals.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/install.php
. This installs all the necessary tables in your database, prompts you for a blog name and creates a temporary password. The password is very complex and long, but don't worry, once you've logged in once you'll be able to change it
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You should now have a working blog, but there's a bit of tidying up you will want to do quite quickly
Remove the default post and comment Click on the Site Admin link under the Meta heading on the right of the blog. Click on the Posts link at the left of the admin screen. Hover the mouse over the Hello World! post and some links will appear underneath. Cick on Trash
Add a post of your own Click on Add New (next to Edit Posts at the top of the screen). Fill in a title for the post in the single line field where the cursor is. Tab to the big text area field and enter the content of the field. I'll leave you to explore the various buttons above the field and provide some suitable content, but don't get carried away, there are still a few more things you'll want to sort out. When you've finished your opening salvo, click on the blue Publish button at the right of the screen.
Change the About page Click on the Pages link at the right of the Admin screen. Click on About and then edit the page in the same way as you created your first post. Click on the blue Update button at the right hand side of the screen
Change your blog's tagline. The tagline is the line below your blog's title. To change this, from the Admin menu at the left of the screen chose Settings/General and change the Tagline (second item down). If you've had second thoughts about the name of your blog, you can also change this here (it isn't possible to change your blogs URL or WordPress login id). There are other settings that you might want to change on this page. When you've finished click on the blue Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen
Change the look of the sight Remember at this stage you are only changing how the site looks on a PC or Mac, not how it looks on an iPhone. From the Admin menus choose Appearance/Themes.There are four themes available at this stage, but there are many, many more available if you chose Add New from the admin menu.. To choose the theme click on the Activate button at the top right of the preview (it can be quite hard to see). To reject the choice click on the X at the top left or tight of the preview
That's about all you need for now, but do explore all the other settings that are available